WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to pick Julie Chavez Rodriguez as his 2024 re-election campaign manager, two sources familiar with the decision confirmed to NBC News on Sunday.
Chávez Rodríguez, one of the most prominent Latinas in the administration and granddaughter of the late labor leader César Chávez, serves as Senior Advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. CBS news first reported that she would be named Biden’s campaign manager.
“It makes sense to bring someone of good faith to the Biden campaign leadership team,” said María Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, a nonprofit organization that seeks to boost Latino turnout in elections.
Biden is expected to officially announce his candidacy on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of the launch of his 2020 campaign, and has summoned major financial backers to Washington for dinner on Friday and meetings on Saturday.
Chávez Rodríguez worked as deputy campaign manager on Biden’s 2020 general election team after a stint as roving chief of staff in now-Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Prior to that, she worked in Harris’s Senate office, as a senior official in President Barack Obama’s White House Office of Public Engagement, and as a program director at the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation.
Democrats have long hoped that most of the shots for their campaign will be taken from the White House, where their cabal of top advisers, a group that includes Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn and the 2020 campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, sit down. .
Biden’s long-awaited campaign is ramping up at a time when former President Donald Trump has led the polls of leading Republican contenders and potential candidates. Most national surveys show a close race in a possible rematch between Biden and Trump.
Biden’s approval rating stood at 41 percent in an NBC News poll released Sunday, its lowest level since May. In the same poll, 70% of Americans, including 51% of Democrats, say they believe Biden should not run. Sixty percent of Americans, including a third of Republicans, say they believe the same about Trump.
Chávez Rodríguez would not be the first Latina to run for president. But she would be the first Latina to win as campaign manager if she is named as expected, she remains in office and Biden is re-elected.